Author's Note: So this chapter is pretty graphic! Gore and stuff but I didn't describe it too much, at least I hope I didn't, but after this it won't be anywhere near this bad I promise lol It's just to show that MAgic Man really means business and is really planning to test everyone's patience.
"This place is really tripping me out." Wally said as he and Artemis searched for a restroom. They came across another bulletin board that had several newspapers stapled to it as well.
"I feel like we've just been walking through the same hall over and over again." Artemis rubbed her arms. She decided to take a peak at one of the newspapers and was mortified at what she read. Three children were kidnapped and found dead, bodies all mutilated. One boy and two girls. One of the girls were so messed up they needed a DNA test to find out who she was.
"Magic Man has gone way too far with this one." Wally gulped, reading over Artemis's shoulder.
"I hope the others are okay." Artemis pulled herself away from the article, refusing to read more. Wally stayed engrossed in the story.
"This is so... messed up." He muttered while reading.
Artemis bit back the urge to ask what it was. Instead, she turned her back. "I don't think there's a restroom in here. I think it's another stupid maze like the first level."
"Yeah, I think so too." Wally sighed. Suddenly, the sound of a ringing phone was heard.
"W-Where's that coming from?" Artemis asked.
"Somewhere over... there." Wally pointed down the hall. They slowly made their way in that direction and paused at a closed door. The ringing was coming from within.
"Uh, was this room here a few seconds ago?" Artemis whispered. Wally shook his head. The ringing persisted and Wally slowly opened the door, revealing a classroom where the desks were lined up normally and phone sat casually on the middle one.
Artemis and Wally looked at each other before Wally hesitantly stepped forward and answered the call.
All he heard was heavy breathing. He hung up.
"Creepy." He stared at the phone. It vibrated with a new text message. He looked at it and read it aloud. "To get out of here alive, find all the missing pieces."
"What missing pieces?" Artemis asked, though she had an idea. She really wished that idea was wrong, though.
"Maybe we have to find the missing floorboards?" Wally gestured to the holes in the floor.
"I hope." Artemis muttered.
"Hello!" A cute, happy little girl's voice chimed in from the entrance to the room. She had long black hair and wore a red dress.
"Uh, hi?" Wally responded reluctantly.
"You guys look new here." She smiled. "Don't worry though, you'll find your way easily around here. Just follow me!" She turned heel and ran away.
Artemis and Wally gave each other an unsure look but shrugged and decided to go after her.
"Give it... back." Another child's voice groaned from somewhere. The sentence was garbled and almost impossible to understand. "Give... it... back..." They heard again. They both looked around and froze when a little girl ghost emerged from the ground, in the way of the door. Her mouth was open and she revealed that her tongue was gone.
Wally and Artemis screamed loudly and ran back to the wall, knocking over desks in their way. When the ghost moved out of the way of the door, they both ran outside, almost tripping over each other. They continued running down the hall until they saw another ghost but this one was missing the whole top half of its face. Artemis and Wally both screamed as they turned around and ran in the other direction, not looking back and completely forgetting about the nice little girl who offered to help.
-Megan
When Megan woke up, she found Conner and they searched through all the rooms together. They came across a few ghosts but Conner shooed them off.
"I hate ghosts." He grumbled after scaring off a little girl in a red dress. She offered some help but Conner wasn't going to have any of that. He didn't like the looks of her.
"The phone we saw earlier said we need to find missing pieces, what pieces do you think?" Megan asked.
"The missing parts of the ghosts." Conner replied.
"Aw, we get to help them!" Megan got excited.
"Yeah. Where do you think they'd be?" Conner paused when he saw a thick trail of blood ahead. It trailed further down.
"Maybe we have to find their real bodies and get it from there?" Megan pointed to the blood trail. "That could be a hint."
Conner nodded and they both followed the trail. It lead them down a pair of steps and into a room with rows of cubbies with little shoes in them. The little shoes were scattered along the floor as well. A bloodied backpack lay against one of the cubby aisles.
"Something has to be here." Megan started looking around.
The sound of screaming stopped them in their tracks.
"That sounded like Artemis and Wally!" Megan gasped.
"Those ghosts scared them, I bet." Conner looked up. "Sounded like it came from up there."
Megan reached in her utility belt for anything explosive. All she got was another can of tear gas. "How are we going to quickly get there with this?" She frowned.
"There's a hole over there." Conner pointed to a missing section of the ceiling in the corner. "I'll lift you up and you can squeeze through." They walked over and Conner lifted her up. She managed to squeeze her way through and look around. All she saw was a simple office. She walked over to the door and tried to open it but it was locked. The knob had no lock on it, too.
Megan walked over to a large desk and looked underneath. There was someone under there. She screamed in surprise. The sleeping figure out up and tried to stand up but slammed their head on the desk.
"Wait, calm down! It's just me." Kaldur calmed her down.
"Why were you sleeping?!" Megan asked.
"I was exploring the area and found this room." Kaldur got up. "The door closed behind me and wouldn't open, then something knocked me out. As weird as it sounds, I think it was a little kid." He explained.
"Oh, it was one of those ghost kids." Megan said. "There's three of them. In order to get out of here, we need to find their missing parts." She continued.
"That doesn't bother you at all?" Kaldur asked.
"Should it?" Megan frowned, looking legitimately confused.
"Megan?! Are you okay?!" Conner yelled from the bottom floor.
"Yeah, Kaldur's here with me too! He's stuck in a room where the door only opens one way, we're going to have to find this room and let him out." Megan yelled back.
"I don't think it would be wise to leave me here alone. What if the ghost returns and knocks me out again?" Kaldur pointed out.
"Conner, you're going to have to super speed your way through this place until you find us." Megan said through the hole.
"Fine, I'll be as quick as I can be." Conner sighed before speeding away.
"Now we just sit tight." Kaldur looked at Megan.
"Yeah." She nodded back. "Might as well make it interesting, though." She walked back to the desk and started looking through the drawers. Kaldur searched the drawers on the other side.
"I found something." Kaldur held up a small, wrapped up bag.
"That must be one of the missing pieces!" Megan grabbed the bag and took a peak inside. "Yep, it's an eye."
"You're a little too overjoyed about that." Kaldur muttered under his breath.
-Robin
The boy phased through endless floors and walls and found no one and nothing. He found a cute little girl ghost though and she didn't talk at all, only pointed. Her pointing led him to a trash disposal where teachers and students throw trash down the chute and it leads to the furnace. He did not want to go there and find out what it had.
At one point he gave up on phasing and just decided to float casually through some halls, sighing at how completely and utterly alone he is. The Magic Man had told him that they're all in three different dimensions of the same building and in order to get to the other dimension, they must find a piece and give it to the right ghost.
"Unfortunately, I'm having no luck in finding the pieces." Robin grumbled to himself.
"Hello." He heard a small voice say. He turned and saw a little boy but with a missing eye.
"Hi." Robin inwardly cringed.
"We're sick of watching you struggle to find our missing parts so we're just going to put you out of your misery." The boy said in a pissed off voice. Two other ghosts floated up from the floor and nodded. One was the little girl from before and the other seemed to be a girl, judging by her dress, but the entire top half of her head and face was gone.
"We're going to kill you." All three said in unison. Well, the first two did. The third one just made a sickening gurgling noise.
"Why does everything seemingly happen to me?" Robin sighed. He tried to fly away but he was frozen in place.
"Before you meet your end, you're going to see what we suffered through." The girl ghost hissed and a force pulled Robin closer to her. Her eyes glowed and everything went black.
When Robin regained consciousness, he woke up to darkness. He kept struggling to see until he realized he was blindfolded. His hands were tied in front of him and his feet were tied together. He squirmed and moved his bound hands up to his face to move blindfold. When he did, he saw that he was in a room with dirt walls and a rusty light hanging from the ceiling. There was a table nearby and it was drenched with dried blood. Robin tried to phase himself out of his bindings but gasped when he couldn't. He didn't have any powers anymore. He tried to calm himself before panicking and noticed there were two other people in the room. One was laying on the right side and the other on the left. The one on the left was a little boy and the one on the right was a little girl.
'Wait, am I seeing what happened to them?' Robin thought.
Suddenly there was the sound of heavy footsteps and Robin turned to the source. It was a big, chubby man wearing all black and wearing a black knit cap. He trudged over to them and picked up the little boy first, dropping him on the table. He picked up something shiny and Robin covered his eyes with the blindfold, not wanting to watch anymore. He heard some more shuffling and then the sound of screaming. He wanted to yell at the guy to stop but he couldn't, his voice was caught in his throat. His heart started beating really fast when the screaming suddenly stopped and he heard a thump. Suddenly the girl was screaming now and he assumed they were saving him for last.
After another unbearable moment of hearing screaming and being unable to do anything, the yelling turned into gurgling and then it came to an abrupt stop, followed by another thump. He gulped when he was picked up and slammed down onto the table. He wanted to attack, lash out, kick out, do anything but he couldn't. He was frozen. The blindfold was removed and he was shocked to see that the one torturing them wasn't the chubby man. It was another little girl. She had black hair and wore a red dress. She smiled widely and held up a pair of scissors and stabbed it into one of his eyes. He felt it, he felt the terrible pain, the terrible stinging pain, the painful never ending pain, it was so terrible he started screaming.
Suddenly the pain stopped and he was back in the hallway with the three little ghosts. He was on his knees, gasping in shock at what he'd just witnessed.
"That was Sachiko." The little girl said.
"She roams the halls of the dimensions your friends are in." The little boy added.
"Lucky for your friends, they didn't listen to her nor did they follow her." The little girl said.
Robin was still gasping in air, trying to calm himself by letting him know that it was over.
Magic Man is so much more fucked than he thought he was.
"We can transport you into one of their dimensions, but we can't transport you back." The boy and girl said in unison. The third one just gurgled again.
Robin shakily stood up and nodded. "Just.. Just do it."
"One dimension has your friends Conner, Megan, and Kaldur. They already found two of our pieces, though. I think they'll be okay. Wally and Artemis, however, haven't found a single piece. They're both struggling." The little girl explained.
"Take me to them." Robin's voice cracked slightly.
"Them?" The little boy asked.
"Wally and A-Artemis." Robin gulped. Everything shone brightly and he found himself in the middle of a dirty restroom and the ghosts were gone.
A bucket lay on its' side in front of him and a bunch of maggots were swarming and squirming around it. A puddle of blood was also oozing from it.
"Ick." Robin turned away in disgust. He floated upward and phased through the bathroom stalls, finding Artemis and Wally huddled up in the corner stall. They were both... sleeping. Right by the filthy toilet. "Uh, guys?" Robin cleared his throat.
Artemis shot up in alarm and reached behind her back but stopped when she realized she didn't have any arrows. "W-What? Where am I?" She looked around and freaked out when she saw Wally next to her. She jumped up and backed out of the stall and backed up into the wall. "What's going on?!" She yelled. "Megan, why are you disguised as Robin?" She gasped.
"Artemis, calm down," Robin lowered himself to the floor. "Try to remember what happened before you fell asleep."
Artemis paused for a second and looked deep in thought. "I remember now." She muttered. "Sorry, we were running from some ghost and then a little girl came to us and said she'd help but then... I don't remember... Something happened... But I can't remember it..." She looked down.
"It's alright, we can try to figure it out later, for now we need to get Wally and wait for Conner, Megan, and Kaldur to find the missing pieces to join us. I know where to go after that." Robin explained.
"You know everything." Artemis sighed. "Am I really the special one here?" She crossed her arms.
"I wonder that, too." Robin turned to Wally and pushed him with his foot. The boy wouldn't budge. "What's wrong with him?" He shook him even more. "Wally!"
Artemis walked over and shook him violently. He still didn't budge.
"It's like.. he's dead." Robin said quietly. "What the heck happened to you guys?!" He turned to Artemis. He was really starting to lose his cool here.
-Megan
She and Kaldur waited in the office for a good long while before Conner found them. On the way there, he found a small bag with a tongue in it.
"That's two parts!" Megan exclaimed and Conner nodded.
"Where do you think the third one is? It would have to be in a pretty big bag..." Kaldur remembered the third kid.
"Hm... You know, there was a backpack back in that shoe room." Megan remembered the scene.
"Let's go check it out then." Kaldur began to leave the room.
"The shoe room is really far from here." Conner said.
"I'll go back down the hole, you can carry Kaldur and speed back to join me." Megan said, heading toward the hole.
Conner turned around. "Hop on." He said. Kaldur climbed onto his back and they sped off. Megan jumped down the hole and found the backpack just as they arrived.
"Now we just have to find the ghosts." Megan said as she looked in the backpack before zipping it back up and putting it on.
"Shouldn't be hard, they bothered us non-stop before." Conner said.
As if on cue, the three little kid ghosts floated upward from the floor. They all stood in a line and stared.
"Here's your missing pieces." Megan gave each kid what they were missing. The items vanished and the kids were completely whole once again.
"Thank you." The little girl smiled.
"You can join the rest of your friends now." The little boy nodded.
"But your journey doesn't end yet." The other little girl spoke. "There's still much to do." They disappeared and everything flashed white before Megan, Conner, and Kaldur found themselves in the middle of a hallway. In front of them, Robin and Artemis were standing there and Wally was unconscious, lying on Artemis's back like she was giving him a piggyback ride.
"Uh, hey guys." Robin waved. "Took you long enough."
"No kidding." Conner said.
"We were waiting for you guys to come around before we continued." Artemis explained. "Robin says he knows where to go."
"Great, but, what happened to Wally?" Megan asked.
Robin and Artemis exchanged saddened glances.
"We're not really sure ourselves. Artemis doesn't remember." Robin shrugged.
"What do you mean she doesn't remember?" Conner asked.
"Guys, let's figure this out when we reach the destination." Artemis snapped.
"Fine." Conner looked away. "Where to?"
Robin pointed down. "All the way down there. But we don't have time to just explore these halls aimlessly until we find the right path, Artemis you need to break the floors."
Artemis nodded and stomped on the floor, breaking it completely. They all fell, except Robin, and groaned. Wally's unconscious body fell off of Artemis in the process too.
"Next time, warn us." Kaldur got up.
"Yeah, my bad." Artemis got Wally on her back again and made sure everyone was ready before she stomped again. And again. And again. And again. They finally reached a dirt tunnel that was only lit by hanging oil lamps on the walls that hung by ropes.
"We're here." Robin directed everyone down the hall to a huge room that was filled with metal tables, all with rusted blood. Buckets of blood and weird, pink objects sat next to each table. On the walls there were various tools that also had dried blood on them.
"What the heck is this place?" Kaldur muttered in disgust.
"It's like a slaughterhouse." Artemis gulped.
"Alright, the boss is going to find their way in here and when they do, we have to attack them." Robin explained.
Everyone nodded.
The sound of heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway ahead and Robin camouflaged himself. "Get ready, guys." He said.
The big, chubby guy he saw in his vision strode in and Conner immediately attacked, speeding up and punching him in the face. The man groaned and stumbled back but was knocked unconscious by Megan, who smacked him upside the head with a bucket.
"We did it." Kaldur said.
"No, he was just a crony. The real one is coming." Robin corrected him.
Sachiko, the little girl in the red dress, skipped in the room and giggled mischievously.
"So you guys want to kill me and escape this miserable place, right?" She laughed. "Well, I won't make it easy for you." She pointed to Artemis, who immediately started shaking and dropped Wally. She screamed and ran out of the room and down the hall into darkness.
"ARTEMIS!" Megan started to run after her but Sachiko stopped her.
"She's about to face what she'd done. It's up to her whether or not she wants to move on afterward." The little girl giggled.
"What do you mean by that?!" Kaldur yelled.
"You'll see! " Sachiko laughed again. "But until then, let us have fun!" She turned and noticed Wally's body. "Oh, you still haven't accepted the fact that he's dead."
"He's dead?" Megan looked at Robin.
"We were hoping it was temporary..." The new martian said sheepishly.
Sachiko giggled hysterically at that. "Why don't we just get started now that that's cleared up?"